


I kissed your lips and I tasted blood

by whoistorule



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 10:22:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoistorule/pseuds/whoistorule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena leaves Mystic Falls and runs into a few old friends.  </p><p>This is basically a love story between Elena and her humanity, so if you don't love Elena get out, get out now.</p><p>(This is part 1 of..... I haven't decided yet.  Part 2 will come eventually.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I kissed your lips and I tasted blood

Forever never seemed so long as the day Elena left Mystic Falls alone.  She hadn't meant to; she didn't want to, but there's only so many horrors a girl can take being done in her name, even if the girl in question is a vampire.  For Jeremy, she left everything she had, everything she knew, for Bonnie and Caroline, letters of apology.  No plans, no dates, no locations.  Had she any idea where she was going, she still wouldn't have said, but her plan this time had only one step, and that was to leave.

Before, when she was human, Elena never could have outrun the brothers Salvatore, but now she knew the truth.  She was better than them.  Stronger and faster, more thoughtful, more compassionate.  She had a world of possibilities of where to go and what to do, and they had only what they knew about her, what they guessed.

\--

She ends up in Alaska.  It's cliche, she knows, but Elena can't help it.  There's no better place to feel alone than under the expanse of the widening bright sky of Alaskan summer.  All that light; it's like living on the edge of something.  Danger blooms bright eighteen hours a day and it makes her sharper, it welds the ring to her finger, it makes her want to live.

She takes her victims sparingly, lone hunters, campers, hikers.  It's all going fine until it isn't.  Until bright blood spills against the red snow, and the dogs surround her, wet tongues against her cold body, red blood sticky on their pink tongues, the sled spilt by her side.  
Mistake, it was a mistake, but this time it was on her.  There was not Stefan to blame, no Damon.  No one was watching, no one would know or care.  She could walk away and his body would go unfound, and if by chance they did, well Alaska was the wild, any number of animals could be responsible. 

And the worst part was, Elena finds that as much as she knows she should, she doesn't care.  The anger she's feeling, the guilt it's because she doesn't care, not because she does.  The part of her that remembers remorse was dwindling in her solitude, replaced by the singular pulse of desire.  She was powerful, utterly, and she was alone.  Her laugh rings loud in the icy valley, and when she flees, blood drips off her fingertips, a Pollack painting in the white snow.

\--

Despair hits the next day.  Elena took a life, an innocent human life, not one of a man sent to kill her and her family.  His only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Desperation sinks into her marrow.  She killed a man and she didn't even care.  The dogs he bred and loved lapped at his blood like mother's milk, and she'd laughed.  What kind of monster laughs at that?

Elena knows the answer acutely, just as she knows that the visions of Connor, of her mother, were right.  She's done nothing but cause pain from the day they drove off Wickery Bridge.

Tomorrow held the key, and this time there would be no Damon to stop her.

\---

The dogs had dispersed.  The leather that had bound them was teeth-torn, and the ice was marked by patches of murky brown, but Elena can smell the blood she spilled, sharp and fresh.

Standing in the center of her wreckage, Elena took a deep breath and twisted the ring on her finger.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

As always, Katherine's voice sounds like her own, but sharper somehow, crueler, and older.

"Why do you care?"

"I don't," Katherine says, voice impassive, but Elena finds that something's changed.  There's a hitch in Katherine's breath, a question in her eyes.

"You don't understand, I killed him!"

Katherine merely raises an eyebrow. "Is that really what this is about?"

"Of course!"

Rolling her eyes, she's behind Elena in an instant, Elena's slim wrists caught between her own hands. "Don't lie to me," Katherine hisses in her ear as Elena struggles to year herself free.

"You don't understand! Everyone I love has died because of me!" Elena whines, eager to free herself of Katherine's grasp and return to her grim task.

"That's where you're wrong," Katherine says with a laugh, "You'll find I'm the only one who does understand.  But unlike you I wasn't weak.  I saw that it was better to thrive as a vampire than live my life as prey."  Releasing Elena suddenly, Katherine throws her back against the snow, her body cracking through the blood-brown ice. "Aren't you sick of it?  Of having everyone make all your decisions for you?  You were a pawn Elena, a princess locked up in their claustrophobic towers.  But now?  Now you're a queen.  You have everything, you just have to want it, to take it.  You could be my equal, the only one who could ever match me, and instead you choose to sulk in this wasteland, to throw everything you have away over a drunk dog fucking fool."

Elena pants, her eyes locked on her double.  "Fine!" she spits out, her tongue scraping against her fangs, "if you want me to live so badly then teach me!"

Katherine's mocking laugh is answer enough.  "I don't teach.  I don't have the patience, and i have nothing to gain. But I'll take you to someone who will."

\--

Inside Katherine's hotel room at the Holiday Inn (the best accommodations Seward, Alaska has to offer), Elena realizes exactly what months in the wild have done to her.  Katherine's immaculate as always, dark hair curling against her pale skin, lips swiped red.  Elena's hair is a knotted mess, tangled and hewn with dirt and debris. Had Katherine been the sweet type, perhaps she would have sat Elena down and combed through her curls, but Katherine had never been sweet.

Instead Elena poured bottles of conditioner into her hair, filling their tiny bathroom with steam, as Katherine filed her nails, stopping occasionally to peer around the curtain with no hints of subtlety.  With a snort, she eyes Elena's cunt.  "Is that natural, or are there just no razors out there with the bears."

Elena's grateful the shower's steam hides her blush.

“How’d you find me anyway?” she asks, just to change the subject, her voice high in the heat.  ”I assume Damon and Stefan have been looking.”  
Katherine laughs, and Elena wonders if that’s all she ever does.  ”Idiots went looking in places you’d been, places of significance.  Those are the places people go when they want to be found.  You didn’t.”

“So they sent you then?”

“They couldn’t send me to the store for milk.  No, I owed someone else a favor.  You were it.”

“Klaus?”

And there’s here laugh again.  Mocking, always mocking, it cuts through Elena, making her shiver in the heat.  ”Not Klaus.”

“Then wh— oh.”

“Yeah.”

\----

The plane ride dragged. (The plane ride flew.)  Elena sunk against the camel leather seats, her arms and legs folded as Katherine sprawled out along the couch.  It was a private plane ("As if an Original would fly commercial,") and Elena finds herself suddenly intimidated.  She'd flown to Alaska hunched in the back row of the plane, middle seat, their flowing veins beating loud as a bell tower between a middle aged lady and a man who wouldn't stop talking to her about different kinds of fishing hooks, and she'd practically growled at the flight attendant when she cut off her supply of those tiny bottles of whiskey.

This was different.  Here the flight attendants offered her blood, by the chalice or the vein, her choice.  Katherine dug her teeth into the creamy skin of the brunette's thigh, grinning salaciously as she moaned, her legs twitching, her eyes half closed in ecstasy.  Elena wondered if the woman was compelled, she hadn't heard Katherine say anything.  It's not until she noticed the long fingers so like her own, working between the woman's thigh, that she understood why.  Blushing, Elena averted her eyes, choosing instead to focus on the winking sky, the color of a fresh bruise, the dark ocean groaning below them in the cloudless night.

"I do so love to see you blush," Katherine said, emerging from between her victim's thighs.  "It looks so out of place on my face.  Like an out of body experience."  There was blood dripping from her open mouth, and Katherine licked her parted lips, her tongue running along the edges of her glinting white fangs.  "You could join me you know, have a bit of fun for once.  No Stefan to judge you, no Damon to think he's won."  


For a moment, Elena considered it.  She could see it behind her lidded eyes, sinking her fangs into the smooth line of the flight attendant's neck, feeling the pulse of her flowing blood, her living blood, filling her.  Some days Elena thought it was better than sex.  It made her powerful, invincible.  She could see the appeal in Katherine's style; pleasure and pain, complete control.  For a doppelgänger, control was a myth, a fever dream. If Elena gave in, it could be hers, for an hour, for a moment.

But no, that was Katherine's way, not hers.  She shook her head curtly, her eyes still shut. 

"Suit yourself," and Elena could hear the tear of teeth and flesh again, the sharp inhale of the flight attendant, could smell the coppery scent of fresh blood.

When the other attendant comes to give her blood in crystal-wrought stemware, Elena grabs her wrist instead.  The last thing she hears before the bloodbeat drowns out any other sound is the high peal of Katherine's laugh.

\--

They land in Edinburgh at dawn, a sliver of moon hanging like a pendant in the spitting grey sky.  A black car pulled up as they deplaned, and Elena barely had enough time for the Scottish mist to settle on her skin before she’s engulfed in dim lights and black leather.  There was blood on Katherine’s teeth, blood clotting in her curling hair, and Elena could feel her own want rising.  What she took from the flight attendant wasn’t enough to sustain her, not really, but these days nothing felt like enough.  And wasn’t that the whole problem?

Face pressed up against the tinted glass, Elena watched the lowlands become highlands, the dipping valleys soaring into craggy mountains, fuzzy with a motley of patchy greens that fade into the sky.

Elena hadn’t been sure what to expect, something that looked a bit like home, perhaps.  An old Southern plantation house, like the one the Mikaelson family stayed in the last time they were in Mystic Falls. One with a debutant staircase and balcony, and white painted wood.  Instead, the car pulled up beside a stone manor house.  The stone fence was missing bricks, but the wrought iron gates opened smoothly, without rust or squealing.  The smile that flashed across Elena’s face was genuine and unexpected, but it was so like him.  Even in the midst of decay, he always made sure things ran smoothly.

As the car pulled up outside the house, Elena could see him, the lone figure in the dark suit, his face somber as as always, but he smiled as she got out of the car, reaching to take Elena’s hand and help her to her feet.  An unnecessary gesture, but like him as well.  Old fashioned manners.  
He reached to help Katherine after her, but she swatted him away, pulling herself out with a groan.

“I feel like I’ve been sitting for days,” Katherine complained, stretching her arms up above her head, her shirt rising, revealing a swath of taut stomach, streaked lightly with dried blood.

“There’s a meal in the kitchen Katerina,” he said, eyes darting between the doppelgängers, “I’m sure you’ll find her willing.”  Katherine’s gone with a roll of her similar eyes, and then it’s just them, alone in spitting Scottish morning, gravel grey as the sky crumbling beneath their feet.  Elena scuffs her shoes against it.

“I see you’re no longer wearing my mother’s necklace.”

“What, have you forgotten how to say hello?”

“Hello there, Elena.”

“Hello, Elijah.”

\--

They were barefoot in the dew soaked fields, the grass scratching against her feet, sticking between her toes.  She hadn’t thought it possible that Elijah would deign to take off his well polished wingtips for something so pedestrian as a walk in the grass, but there he was, Armani suit rolled just above the ankle so it wouldn’t stain.  

“So what is this exactly, your ancestral home or something?” Elena asked, just a pace behind Elijah as the manor house grew smaller in their wake.

“An ancestral home, not mine.  You don’t pick important places if you don’t want to be found.  But you already know that.”  A smile flickers across Elena’s face.  It feels almost like a compliment, in his typical Elijah way.  Comparing her to him, it’s what he did when he approved.  And somehow, Elena found that she liked it, his approval.

“How did you find me, anyway?”

Elijah laughs, it’s a deep, melodic sound.  Not mocking like Katherine’s, but not without its own sort of cruelty.  “You boarded a plane from Atlanta to Seattle, then another from Seattle to Fairbanks.  All of which you bought using a driver’s license and credit card belonging to one Jenna Gilbert.  What you should be asking yourself is why no one else found you first.”

“So why did no one else find me first?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  Because I misled them.  Klaus is on a trail set by Isobel; he thinks you’re looking into the history of the doppelgängers, on your connections to Miss Petrova.  The brothers Salvatore believe you’re after the cure yourself, that you’ve tracked down a hunter somewhere in Italy. It’s marvelous what technology can do, isn’t it?”

Elena stopped, startled by his confession.  Fidgeting, she went to twist the ring on her finger before she remembered, Elijah had requested she take it off before their evening walk.  Elena had complied, not quite sure what he was going for, but she wasn’t ready to start asking him questions just yet.

“You want to know why of course, if I knew where you were the whole time, why I didn’t go after you?  It’s simple, really.  I was hoping naively, foolishly, that you might come after me yourself.  I had you watched of course.  And when you killed that dog sled driver, well, I thought it might be a good time for an intervention.  Was I wrong?”

Shaking her head Elena sped up to match pace with him once again.  “No,” she said simply, “You weren’t.”

Their walk grew silent, just the sound of their bare feet squishing in the muddy ground.  In the distance, Elena could see the rise of a small, stone shed, it’s mortar cracking, it’s roof half gone.

“What is that?” Elena asked as they drew nearer.  In the day, it would be half filled with sun’s bright light, peeking in through the cracks, through the roof’s break.

“An experiment, if you will allow it.  Tomorrow, you’ll stay there.  Your meals will stay in the sunlight, you in the shadow.  The game is simple.  We’ll slat the roof.  If your meal feels too weak, they’ll pull a rope, showering you in sunlight, forcing you to retreat.  You’ll be watched, of course.  We don’t want you to kill anyone.”

“And the... meals?” Elena shuddered over the word, it felt cruel, inhumane.

“Willing as they can be.  The Mikaelson family has a history of human followers.  It suits our needs to have those skilled in tasks we cannot complete who know who we are, what we want.  Compulsion can be broken.  Loyalty is safer, at times.”

Elena nodded.  It made sense.  And yet, she felt naked without her daylight ring, vulnerable in the pale Scottish moor.

“My life is in your hands, then.  Again.”

“No, Elena, it’s in your own.  You need to learn control.  Some vampires choose to see human beings as blood bags, as meals, my family certainly does.  Katherine, Damon.  Some see them as lesser beings, or as sport, like Klaus.  Some see them as saints or as demons, haunting and taunting them at will, like Stefan.  But you?  You wear your humanity close against your skin.  You have family.  Friends.  You need to feel safe around them again.  I am merely offering a suggestion.  If this doesn’t work, we’ll find another way.”

We.  It was as good as a promise, and it was good enough for her.  Slowly, Elena nodded.

“I’ll do it.”

“Very well then.  Let’s begin.”

\--

The third day is the hardest.  Elena thought the first was awful.  5 times, the woman in white pulled the rope, and Elena’s skin singed and burnt.  Her eyes went dark and bloodshot, and she screamed, but the pain was too much.  The blonde woman’s skin, clothes, and hair were streaked brown and red with her blood, but she never failed to pull the rope, to make Elena stop.

The second day was better.  Only twice did her meal tug his lifeline.  But she fed less, too, terrified of herself, of her own cruelty.  It was harder when they weren’t compelled, when they knew who she was, what she was.  She felt their eyes follow every twitch of her frame.

On the third day she tried to compel her dinner, and the sky fell in.  With a raucous tug, the woman pulled down half the roof, her eyes bright and challenging.  There were few shadows left in the shed, and Elena felt too big for them, her body cowering against the wall.  No one came to fix the shed, to help her.  The woman sat and bled, and Elena starved.  By nightfall, she could feel her body shaking.  The woman’s heartbeat sang in her ears, her blood was sweet and sickly, copper in her mouth.  Elena never wanted anything so much as she wanted this meal, and yet she couldn’t.  Should she move in any direction, the sunlight drank her in, lit her up.  She tried, oh she tried, but she couldn’t get down so much as a few drops before she burned again.

That evening, she lay down in the cool grass and let the dew ease her stinging skin.

“You look ridiculous.”

Elena sat up suddenly.  The previous two nights Elijah had greeted her after her day’s trials, with encouraging words and mindless stories, small things from his past to distract her from her growing hunger.  It had been the beginning of a routine, or so she thought, but here was Katherine again, with a taunting smile so like and unlike her own.

“What are you still doing here?  I thought you said you owed Elijah a favor.  Surely it’s paid off by now.”

“It’s funny.  Watching you torture yourself.  You get so angry.  Your face scrunches up and your eyes go dark and you look like you’re about to cry.  Cute, almost.  Is that what I look like when I’m mad?”

“What do you want Katherine?”

Katherine sighed, laying down on the grass beside her, and motioned for Elena to do the same.  Elena could feel her breath quicken in her chest, which means Katherine could hear it too.  Sure enough, she laughed.  “Relax, kitten, I’m not here to hurt you.”  
Surprisingly, Katherine went silent.  The moor sang with the violin strings of crickets, buzzed with the low hum of flies, and Elena lay beside her doppelgänger, listening to the matched pitch of their quiet breaths.

“I’ve been running for 500 years,” Katherine said quietly after a few moments.  “From Klaus, from Elijah, from Stefan and Damon.  And then you came along, and I thought finally.  Something else to distract them.  But I had to see for myself, you know.  Had to make sure it was real.  And it was.  And then they loved you, both of them did, and for the first time in my life, I was jealous.”

Elena’s fingers threaded through the grass.  It was a ridiculous confession, that the elusive Katherine Pierce; Katerina Petrova, the original doppelgänger, jealous of her?  Elena was nothing, not really.  All her existence did was ruin the lives of those around her.  Bonnie’s grams, Matt’s sister, Aunt Jenna, all of them would be alive if not for her.

“God, you really can’t see it, can you?  That stupid spark of goodness in you.  That pure thing they all want to save.  I had it too, once, but it was different for me.  An act.  I put it on with my lipstick in the morning, rubbed it into the apples of my cheeks, curled it into my hair.  With you, it’s natural.  It’s enough to make me hate you.”

“So do you?” Elena said after a while.  The night drifted on slowly, the moon growing heavy in the sky.  “Hate me I mean.”

“Yes.” Katherine’s response was quick and sharp, but then she sighed.  “And no.  You didn’t ask for this any more than I did.  The problem is, I saw it for what it was.  An opportunity.  Immortal life, infinite power, endless youth?  I can do what I want, and no one can stop me.  You don’t understand what an opportunity that was for me, Katerina Petrova, who had nothing.  Suddenly everything was in my grasp, I just had to reach out and take it.”

Elena did understand, at least a little bit.  Before she was helpless.  Klaus’s blood bank.  The only thing she had to bargain with was her own life.  She did it once, stabbed herself in the gut to make a point.  But now, well, she was a monster, wasn’t she?  She killed two people.  At least one of them was an innocent.  The old Elena Gilbert never would have done that.

“So why are you here?” Elena found herself asking again.

“I ran from them five hundred years.  But now they’re all busy.  Looking for you.”

“And you’re jealous?”

The laugh returns, but it’s lighter now, less mocking, more knowing.  “A little.  But mostly I’m just bored.  I’ve forgotten what it feels like, not to be constantly looking over my shoulder.  At least when I’m here there are willing meals and free entertainment.  I’ll leave again.  I always do.  Elijah understands, for all that he’s the weakest of his brothers.  Sentimental fool.  He was in love with me once, you know.”

“I know.”

“They were all in love with me once.  And now they’re all in love with you.  Pity you didn’t have a secret love child like I did.  Then one day you’d understand.”

It’s Elena’s turn to laugh now, fitful rolling sobs that caught in her throat and echoed through the moor.  It melted tension from her neck, unknotted her back, and slowly, for the first time in a long time, Elena felt her body relax.  

“Yeah.  Pity.”  
  
\--

The thing is, until her parents car went over Wickery Bridge, life came easy to Elena.  She never asked for it to, but she'd always been naturally smart, never had much trouble studying for tests.  When she learned something, it stayed learned.  And people?  Well, she was great with them.  Caring was the easiest thing in the world, and whoever she loved returned her love in abundance.  Call it her natural effervescence, her indisputable charm, but when Elena smiled at someone, they smiled back.

And then, things began to dwindle.  Oh, not her charm, her kindness, her infectious influence, that only grew.  It was like her brush with death made her aura of compassion grow.  Each new monster that passed through Mystic Falls set their sights on her, and how could they not?  She was the gorgeous, vulnerable, elusive Petrova doppelgänger.  What was their safety, their secrecy in the face of one of life's rare mysteries.  
Her friends who died, they died for her.  Because of her.  Elena knew that utterly.  And she was single minded in her desire for control.  She needed it like she needed nothing else.  The want of it beat in her veins and burned on her skin, but the bloodlust overtook her time and time again.  The nature of her innate humanity was at utter odds with that of her darker side, and Elena could hear the dual voices of the Salvatore brothers in her ears.  

"Turn away or turn it off," Stefan whispered, his dark eyes materializing through the smoke of her sunlit skin.  All or nothing, that's what Stefan always told her.  

And Damon's taunting voice rang sweet and mocking from her other side.  "Give in," he said, his crooked smile beckoning from a hazy dream, "Enjoy it. It's what we were made to do."

"No!"

The voice rang out, harsh and sharp, and Elena was surprised to find it was her own.  There was blood on her teeth and smoke in her mouth and her eyes lightened, squinting in the sunlight.

"What?" her victim asked, gauze wrapped fingers pressing against her dripping neck.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't talking to you," Elena said, at once ashamed, her eyes cast on the stone floor.

The room fell silent but for the slow breath of the dark eyed woman, and for the first time in two weeks, Elena noticed the room's quiet.  It seemed tangible in the hazy sunlight, stretching out between them, making the room feel small, claustrophobic, even.

"I'm sorry," Elena said suddenly, feeling sheepish.

"For what?"

"For..." Elena stops, not sure what she's supposed to say.  "For not being able to stop, before."

"Well that's what I'm here for, isn't it?  So you can learn to stop."

Elena blushed, her cheeks pink against the browning dark of the woman's blood on her lips.

"Would you like to try again?"

Elena nodded slowly.  She hadn't even noticed the roof slats being replaced, so focused was she on examining the stone floor so she wouldn't have to meet her victim's eyes.

"Then let's begin."

\--

"I spoke to the woman today," Elena confessed quietly, her legs dangling idly from the edge of the stone fence.

"Oh?"  Elijah's face was impassive in the dark.  He was impeccably dressed as always, and barefoot still in the muddy moor.

"Was that... is that allowed?"

“You tell me, Elena.  I’m not in control here, you are.”

“I am?”  Her tone’s puzzled as she kicks her feet against the stone.  Her hair’s matted and tangled, and all around her she can smell blood.  Her

“Yes.  There’s not much point to this experiment if I’m in control.”

“I thought... But you took my daylight ring.”

“You gave me your daylight ring.  Would you like it back?”

Her fingers twist around the place the ring once was.  She never seemed to notice it until it meant something, never realized how accustomed she had been to wearing it until it was gone.  A part of her wanted to say yes, to relieve herself of the daily pain.  Elijah was offering her a way out.  But the voices of Stefan and Damon rang in her ears and she found herself lost.  

“What would it mean,” she was trepidatious as she spoke, “if I took the ring back?”

It was barely a smile, just the hint of his mouth tilting upwards, a slight swell of his lips, but Elena knew she asked the right question.  “It would mean we failed.  We’d have to find another way.”

“Then I don’t want it.”  He nodded with that imperceptible glint in his eyes, but somehow Elena felt he approved.  “But... could I shower?”  
Elijah’s smile opens something in her, and she wobbles slightly on the stone ledge.  “Of course.  You have free reign of my land and my house at night.  You could even sleep in a bed if you’d like.”

But Elena shook her head.  A shower would wash the blood from her hair, it would renew her.  A bed would only remind her of what she was giving up, of what she took.  Beds were for the civilized, for the safe, and she was nothing but a monster.

“Though I prefer things neat, I have to say, the unwashed savage look suits.  Very Alexander McQueen.”

Only Elijah could insult her and compliment her in one breath, and Elena found herself smiling.

“Just the shower it is then.  Well, you know where to find it.  Just make sure you’re back at the shed before dawn.  It’s a long way to cross in the sunshine.”

\--

It was four excruciating days until the blonde girl came back, and each one dragged longer than the last.  Elena wasn’t sure why, but she was eager for her.  The sound of her voice had rung in her thoughts since, a twisting sine curve around the beat of the day’s blood.  And then, when it was her at long last, all the questions Elena had felt sticky in her throat, caught in her paper-dry mouth, lulled by the siren song of pulsing blood, just below the surface of her blue veins.  Forcing herself to meet the blonde woman’s eyes, Elena pushed the darkness back.

“Why do you do this,” she blurted between fanged teeth.  “You’re not compelled, you could leave!  Why offer yourself up for this?”

The woman shrugged, leaning back against her arms, exposing more of the long curve of her bare neck.  Her body was lush with curves, but her thickness did nothing to mask the sound of her body’s life force, pulsing through every inch of her very human flesh.  There was sunlight streaking through the chinks in the walls, but none of it so much as came near her and Elena swallowed hard.

“The Mikaelson family pays for my entire life.  They support my family, sent me to the best private schools, the best university.  They’ll put me through law school as well when the time comes.  I know people who would do a lot more for a full ride to Yale.”

“But doesn’t it... you know, hurt?”

“You get used to it.”

“And it doesn’t bother you, being their blood bags?”

The woman sat up, sharply, the swift pull of her shoulders raising the swell of her breasts.  If Elena closed her eyes, she could picture dark blood spilling down over her, her fangs raking against the thin skin of her chest.  “Is that what you think they see me as?  Well, perhaps it would be true if I worked for Klaus.  But Elijah?  He asks me how my studies are going, visits me at school twice a year to make sure I’m keeping up.  You can’t talk to a blood bag.”  She smiled, and the muscles in her neck pulsed, and Elena almost jumped.  Elena’s fingers cut into the palm of her hand as she kept herself against the stone wall.  “Well you could, I guess, but it couldn’t talk back.”

“What’s your name?”

“Carolina, but I usually go by Lina.”

Carolina.  Elena eyed her carefully.  She didn’t much look like a Carolina.  Or a Lina.  Then again, Elena hadn’t really thought about her having a name at all.

“I’m Elena.”

“I know that.”

Of course she did.  That was stupid of Elena to think she didn’t.  “I have a friend named Caroline, she’s blonde, too.”

“I know that one as well.”  That answer surprised her, and Elena raised her eyebrows, her knees sliding out in front of her as she leaned against the back wall.

“You do?”

“Course I do.  Elijah’s got plenty of files on you.”

“That’s sort of creepy.”

“You’ve been drinking my blood for two weeks, but that’s creepy.”

And then Elena laughed.  It was a release, it was always a release.  Laughter seemed to come so rarely these days, pressed between the siren song of beating blood and the harsh singe of sunlight.  “Fair point.”

The thing about questions was, once Elena had asked one, she didn't quite know when to stop.  Each question begot more, fledgling children half formed and wanting, webbing like generations, stretching out in front of her.  She wanted to know everything; was thirsty for it.

"But the Ori- the Mikaelsons, they are so.... Unpredictable.  What do you do when Klaus has gone on one of his daggering sprees?  Surely he or Rebekah doesn't think to check in on your school."

"No," she smiled wryly, and Elena could see the pink of her open mouth, the swallow of her throat was so distracting she could scream.  "But while Klaus and Rebekah are fanciful, impractical, Elijah is not.  We tend to their finances while they rest, grow their virvane.  We keep up their connections in politics, in society, in art, so they can rejoin at a moment notice.  The years of service repay the fallow years, when we're rich with opportunity."

Elena could see the appeal of it, she supposed.  Money hadn't even been on her horizon until her parents died, but she could imagine a different world, one in which she had to bear the financial responsibility of herself and Jeremy, and the thought of not being able to take care of him left her heavy and desperate.

"How many of you are there?" Elena asked, distracting herself from the growing hunger.

"Families that serve the Mikaelsons?  10 or so I believe?  My brother Javier's the other blonde.  He's studying business at LSE."  
Elena felt split in two.  Lina had a brother, a brother whose blood had been wet in her mouth.  A brother like Jeremy.  How could she stand it?  Sitting here, letting her brother do the same, all the while a monster lurked in the dark.  It made her so angry she could scream.  Eyes gone dark, Elena felt her fangs pop against her lip.

"You're hungry," Lina was saying, "you should eat."

Elena rose, looming towards Lina, until she was standing above her.  Gently, she offered Lina her hand and pulled her up.  With a steady hand, Lina grabbed the rope that was her life line, and offered her wrist to Elena.

The sound of her blood was so loud, thick as drum beats.  Her fangs grazed the thin skin, two light parallel lines, railroad tracks bright against the pale, and then Elena drew back.

"Tell me more about your family?"  It was a request, a plea, when it could have been a demand, and Lina complied.

The sound of her voice was barely audible against the slow sluice of blood through her suckling lips.  It was warm against her teeth, and sweet in her mouth, metallic and rich.  With each suck, Elena could hear a whine in Lina's voice, a hitch in her throat, but she kept talking and Elena drank, drank until she was sated.  She could feel her limbs getting heavy, could hear the hungry voice of the monster behind her ears demanding further tribute, but somehow Elena found herself, for the first time in a long time, saying no.

When her fangs squealed back behind her teeth and Elena let up, Lina wavered slightly before she fell against the ground.

"Was it... Was I too much?  You should have stopped me!"

Lina merely shook her head.  "Someone has to give you a chance.  And that time, it was different.  You stopped yourself."

\--

Her feet are dirty against the soft Persian carpet, grass shedding from her toes and sticking to the fibers as she crept through the house, clean towel wrapped around her chest.  The shower was down the hall to the left, and Elena couldn't wait to feel clean.  Today wasn't the first day she'd avoided the sun's light, but that's only because in the past she'd gotten faster at anticipating the sharp tug of the rope.  Her reflexes were as heightened as her senses, and muscles twitched before they pulled, as much of a warning as if they'd shouted it at the top of her lungs.  The only complication was that Elena had to be paying attention to something other than the bloodlust to get herself to the safety of the shadows in time.  
Today was different.  Today she'd stopped of her own will.  Because she'd wanted to.  Because it was the right thing to do.  Because she could hear something other than the drumming beat of human hearts.  She had heard Lina.  (She'd heard herself.)  So distracted was Elena by her victory that she walked straight into Elijah, her towel falling with a yelp.

Before she'd the chance to pick it up, or he'd the chance to stare, Elijah retrieved it from the dark carpet and wrapped it back around her naked body.

"Elena," he said, not bothering to hide the smirk playing on his lips.

"Sorry I, I'm going to shower."

"You look different somehow."

"Well, I'm... full." It was true.  She was satiated and satisfied, and for once without guilt.  It made the meal sweeter; it was almost like being human again.

"And Carolina is all in one piece?"

"Yes!"  Elena felt a bit indignant at that.  Surely he knew her better than to think she'd be so pleased to leave Lina bleeding.

"Well."  Elijah's smile was genuine, and dare Elena think it, perhaps even a little bit impressed.  "That was quicker than I anticipated.  Though you have always been a fast learner.  One victory does not win a war, of course.  You'll try again tomorrow?"

"Of course."

With a noise of approval, he eyed her carefully, and Elena pulled her towel a bit tighter.  "Elena, how would you like to learn to play chess?"

\--

"So he's trying the chess thing with you then?"

Elena yelped through the rush of the shower, and Katherine's laugh echoed through the tiled bathroom.

"Haven't you ever heard of privacy!"

"What?! It's nothing I haven't seen before.  And believe me, it looks better on me."

The ceramic tile was cool against Elena’s head as she sighed, leaning against the wall of the shower.  “What do you want Katherine?”

“Nothing.  I told you.  I just think it’s funny to see you squirm.”

Rolling her eyes, Elena returned to the task of washing herself, letting the scalding water paint her a flushing red in the steam.

“He taught me chess.  When I was still Katerina Petrova.  Said I had a knack for it.  Well, he also said that my impatience and my tendency towards curiosity would get me in trouble, but, you know.  That’s just Elijah.” Elena made a noncommittal noise, not quite sure what Katherine was going for here.  Bragging again?  Or more of her odd, almost sisterly jealousy.

“He hates losing pieces.  Not the pawns, but the rest of them.  He’ll risk everything but the king to save his queen.  Problem is, he plays a long game.”

“Do you still play with him?” Elena asked, shutting the water with a squeal of rotating metal.

“No.  I hate losing.  And eventually, Elijah always wins.”

\--

 


End file.
